Sad to hear but kudos for an absolute feat of engineering.
Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again
41–50 of 210 posts
Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again
#42They should auction it off. For pickup only, of course. I'd like to own the first helicopter on Mars.
Hasselblad liked to advertise that there were a couple free ones on the moon, you just had to pick them up. To save weight for more sample returns, the Apollo astronauts did the logical thing and kept the film, but chucked the cameras out on the moon.
Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably don't want any flying debris hitting the rover.
It's nearly a kilometer from the rover, should be fine. But I agree that it's better to leave it, download the remaining images and data from memory, maybe leave the software running as an experiment in non-rad-hardened computers on the surface, and eventually put it in a museum, than risk it crashing in spectacular fashion.
The tips of the rotors approach the speed of sound. Around Mach 0.95.
I'm sure someone can do the math on the maximum debris field, but I think it'll be larger than you're thinking.
Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again
#44I just interned at the NASA office (at Ames) that designed large chunks of and did a lot of flight planning / analysis for Ingenuity. It had some really awesome people behind it and its success inspired a number of new Mars rotorcraft missions (rotorcraft will be an integral part of Mars Sample Return). Flight is going to be a huge part of future solar system exploration efforts and Ingenuity paved the way. o7
Isn't Mars Sample Return pretty much dead at this point?
I contributed to the helicopter design for it so I'm biased but I think it'll happen eventually even if the funding isn't approved this administration/year/decade. The already-stashed samples will be up there basically forever, and we'll probably want samples from a few different areas anyways, so it makes sense to go grab them.
Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again
#45Are images of the damage available to the public? "Imagery revealing damage to the rotor blade arrived several days later." https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/after-three-years-on-mars-nasa...
Everything about the mission provided valuable data: especially that damaged blade. Failure modes are useful. Next, it might be useful to try flying anyway. If not, they still have running cameras, sensors and computer, until Perseverance moves out of range.
The rotors will be unbalanced (even if the other side also broke off, chances of the same amount breaking of are as remote as the thing itself), so it will vibrate and probably tip over if it spins too hard
Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again
#46So, it still landed, upright no less, with a piece of the rotor blade missing?
I'd guess that when a piece of rotor comes off during flight, the imbalance would make landing impossible. Very curious to what happened, but probably we'll never know exactly.
Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again
#47They should auction it off. For pickup only, of course. I'd like to own the first helicopter on Mars.
You joke, but Russia did that with their moon rover.
In 1993, to Richard Garriott, for just $68,000: https://www.space.com/8073-privately-owned-soviet-moon-rover...
Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again
#48They should auction it off. For pickup only, of course. I'd like to own the first helicopter on Mars.
Better investment than an NFT, at least.
Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again
#49They should auction it off. For pickup only, of course. I'd like to own the first helicopter on Mars.
That's an amazing idea. Not only could they have fun with that stage but it'd be a fun race to see who could get it for them. Then have a big show when it's brought back to Earth and delivered to the owner. I could see SpaceX and FedEx team up for some amusing PR on that one.
Re: Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again
#50Damage to the blade tip is apparent in the shadow. But I would try one more flight just to see how it fares in such conditions, if it can be corrected in software etc.
They can easily mimic the damage on earth. While there is more gravity, we can adjust atmosphere and measure lift, vibration and whatever. Probably modern engineering tools can do this all in software, but cutting the blade off a drone on earth is easy. Only if we are convinced by on earth simulation that we can still fly this should we attempt it. Otherwise attempting flight this risks doing more damage to something else. (the rover is too far away, so I guess not much - but that also means we can't observe what happens and adjust based on the rovers sensors)